Best Anti Virus software for Mac

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How could it possibly scan the drive for any nasties in that short period of time?

I haven't tried it but my Malwarebytes scan takes just over eight minutes on my Mavericks 300GB partition.

I'd say that would be about normal for an HDD. What times are others seeing?

Scans with Malwarebytes are between 1 minute to a minute and a half on my computer.
 

krs


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How could it possibly scan the drive for any nasties in that short period of time?

I haven't tried it but my Malwarebytes scan takes just over eight minutes on my Mavericks 300GB partition.

I'd say that would be about normal for an HDD. What times are others seeing?





- Patrick
======

The way malwarebytes scans, I assume the time for the scan depends only on the speed of the processor regardless of the size or usage of the hard drive

My scan just now took 1 minute 58 seconds
Late 2012 Mini 2.5 GHz i5; just for the record, the HD is 500GB with 404GB used
 
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...viewed the video below (one of the links there) - now I understand the 'short scan time' for this app...

Yeah...that guy doesn't know what he's talking about. His explanation is moronic.

It's exactly as I told you...and both the DetectX folks and the MalwareBytes folks won't deny it if asked directly...those products don't scan within any files or apps. They only do a quick cursory scan for specifically named files in specific places, and that's it. That works fine for any malware that is so lamely written that it installs a file with the same name *always* and in the same place *always* and it doesn't infect anything. But it's worthless for the overwhelming amount of malware (not adware, which is different).

Real anti-virus software scans all of the files and applications on your hard drive looking inside all of them for any that are infected. That takes time.

Fortunately we have an excellent free app, VirusBarrier Free Edition, available to us to use to look for malware.
 
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OK, just did an experiment with VirusBarrier, the free version.

Got it from the Mac App Store.

Ran it. The CPU in my mid-2015, MBPr with a 1Tb SSD, running Mojave took off, running over 600% CPU utilization for just VirusBarrier. The fans then took off, running over 6000rpm and the cpu temps shot up to over 200F and hovered there. Ran for over an hour to completion. Found nothing, as I expected.

I won't be running it again. Those kinds of temps are not good for the CPU or the adjacent components. Probably shortened the life of my MBP doing the test.

My vote? Give it a pass, along with all the other A/V software for Macs.
 
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OK, just did an experiment with VirusBarrier, the free version.

Got it from the Mac App Store.

Ran it. The CPU in my mid-2015, MBPr with a 1Tb SSD, running Mojave took off, running over 600% CPU utilization for just VirusBarrier. The fans then took off, running over 6000rpm and the cpu temps shot up to over 200F and hovered there. Ran for over an hour to completion. Found nothing, as I expected.

I won't be running it again. Those kinds of temps are not good for the CPU or the adjacent components. Probably shortened the life of my MBP doing the test

WoW! Those are really high readings. Thanks for the post. It looks like I won't be trying VirusBarrier.
 
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WoW! Those are really high readings. Thanks for the post. It looks like I won't be trying VirusBarrier.

Hello - please go back to my post #6 on the first page of this thread for more details on running VirusBarrier - my experience was similar to Jake - I wrote the developer who did respond - see post #25 - and seemed not that concerned, but looking at my temps going into the 160+ºF range and the fans speeding up to 3-4X their usual rates was less than comforting - ran the app on 2 laptops & my iMac (less effect on the desktop computer) and not sure I want to use it again? Dave :)
 
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Hi Dave,

I seen your readings in post #6 but I believe I overlooked post #25. If the developer see's nothing wrong with your readings and the temps and fan speeds are so great, I believe the developer can keep his VirusBarrier. I'm not going to try it. I spent too much $$$ for the computer to get those readings running a software. Thanks Dave for the readings. :)
 
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Ran it. The CPU in my mid-2015, MBPr with a 1Tb SSD, running Mojave took off, running over 600% CPU utilization for just VirusBarrier. The fans then took off, running over 6000rpm and the cpu temps shot up to over 200F and hovered there. Ran for over an hour to completion.


Thanks for the heads-up, and those from other members, that's just pushing things too much to even try it on my iMac AFAIC.





- Patrick
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OK, just did an experiment with VirusBarrier, the free version....

Ran it. The CPU in my mid-2015, MBPr with a 1Tb SSD, running Mojave took off, running over 600% CPU utilization for just VirusBarrier. The fans then took off, running over 6000rpm and the cpu temps shot up to over 200F and hovered there. Ran for over an hour to completion.

Those kinds of temps are not good for the CPU or the adjacent components.

Of course, you don't have to run a scan of your entire disk. You can run a short scan, on one particular area of your disk at a time, and thus never let temperatures rise that high.

Found nothing, as I expected.

Of course you didn't find anything. What would you expect to find? As I said when I originally recommended VirusBarrier here (in another thread, I think), there are really only two reasons to run VirusBarrier. One is if you are paranoid and you insist that you have a virus. In that case VirusBarrier will show you that you don't.

The other is when you have downloaded something and you don't know if it's safe. In that case you can use VirusBarrier to scan just that one thing. It's quite handy for the latter, actually. And in the latter case it will only take a few seconds to scan whatever it is you are unsure about.
 
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Randy, I wasn't attacking your opinions of the software, just posting my results from a test. Yes, you can run a shorter scan, but if you think you are infected, you would normally run a test of everything.

And your snarky comment about not finding anything was unappreciated. Sarcasm is never appropriate.
 
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Jake I don't think Randy was being 'snarky'. Explaining as there are no Mac OS X viruses, there are no virus 'definitions' to download. Some folks don't understand when they download these 'definitions' they are all for Windows viruses which cannot execute on the Unix based OS X operating systems.
 

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Without giving myself too much credit I have managed to avoid most malware over the years by excercising my suspicious nature of any unprecedented requests for information from me. Plus the judicious use of a benchmark quality VPN. Still it does get a little disheartening when despite regular running of Malwarebytes I inevitably get no findings. But it has not always been the case. It was a while back but I did get a hit on a "thing" called Spigot. There were 3 elements of this malware, in different locations and only one had the word Spigot as part of its file name. I left them in a quarentined state for a while then deleted them about a week later.


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So I don't think we should complain if Malwarebytes doesn't find anything, on the contrary. CAN it find anything? That's the question. Well personally until I can find a reason to doubt it I'll continue to use it.


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Jake I don't think Randy was being 'snarky'. Explaining as there are no Mac OS X viruses, there are no virus 'definitions' to download. Some folks don't understand when they download these 'definitions' they are all for Windows viruses which cannot execute on the Unix based OS X operating systems.
What makes you think there are no viruses for the Mac?
There are not a lot, but the number is certainly not zero

Here is another nice summary of know malware
https://macpaw.com/how-to/known-mac-viruses-malware-security-flaws

Any try CleanMyMacX which is what is recommended by this author.
 
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And your snarky comment about not finding anything was unappreciated. Sarcasm is never appropriate.


I wasn't being "snarky" OR sarcastic. I was emphatically agreeing with you. In the overwhelming number of cases, there is nothing to find. There just isn't much Mac malware in the wild, and what there is tends to have been already patched against in the Mac OS.
 
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OK, Thanks, Randy. It's hard to communicate inflection in type.
 

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Yes krs, I say this very quietly, I do use CMMX. I have been using Clean My Mac since it's introduction years ago, despite advice to the contrary by several members of this forum. This was valid and well intentioned advice against any software caperble of altering system files and as such it is good advice. I do not promote it because it is a powerful tool with the potential to do irreversible harm but I could argue that OnyX is just as dangerous. If you do use it ensure you have a bootable clone first and don't fiddle with default settings unless you have read the full description of what each does. Like removing email attachments.


Sent from my iPhone
 
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